And After All This Time
by Kyrie74
Summary: The anniversary of the strange events beneath the Paris Opera House is a day of sadness for the Vicomte de Chagny. StageALWbased oneshot.


**Gothenburg, Sweden**

_"I'm tired, I've been torn, a cruel, wretched storm churns like a gale in my bones"_

Raoul de Chagny sat alone in the deep window seat of a small leased estate outside of Gothenburg.

Beyond the glass, the stars slowly faded between the leaves and a bird rustled in the shrubbery below.

A maid came, tired and quiet, to set a cup of hot tea on the table behind him. For a moment, it looked as if she might speak, might question him. But she twisted a corner of her apron and hurried from the little upstairs parlor.

Behind him, the door to Christine's bedroom was closed.

Raoul's face was reflected in the window, mottled with the drops of a rain shower that had passed as quickly as a sigh. The thick glass showed him a face no longer boyish, an unshaven face that had aged five years in twelve months, a face that was weary and pale beneath rumpled brown hair already trailed with a few fine lines of silver.

"A year," he said to himself, "a year ago tomorrow."

He was exhausted. The pain, Christine's pain, had lasted for three days now.

For the first three days and the first two nights he had refused to leave her side, watching in horror as blood stained the sheets of her bed and soaked into the soft mattress beneath her moaning body.

It was only two hours ago that Doctor Bergstrom had finally ordered him from the room, insisting that he rest and take some food before he became too weak and ill to be of any use.

Too helpless, too tired, he'd let their housekeeper lead him from the bedroom into the little parlor adjacent and bring him some soft potato bread and cold chicken. He'd refused the brandy she'd brought up from his study, though. It would be too easy to let the drink dull his senses, to make him numb to the agony just beyond the heavy door.

He turned from the slowly brightening horizon and sank down in the window seat, resting his aching back against the dark wood paneling of the alcove.

"She will want to be buried in Perros," he thought, "beside her father. There is room in the Daae vault."

It was just as well.

His family had not yet accepted his marriage to a girl from the Opera Populaire, even if he had known her from childhood holidays at the shore and had sat beside her as Papa Daae played haunting folk songs on his beloved violin. They would not easily agree to her interment in the de Chagny crypt.

_No, no…she is not dead yet. Not dead…yet._

He shook his head. What good would it do to deny it now?

For the first day, he had believed she could be saved, that the physician could stop the hemorrhaging in time. It was already too late to save their son. But, by the second afternoon, he had accepted the truth.

His wife was dying. He wondered how she had lingered so long.

He shifted his weight against the wall. His own pain was always there, a reminder of that night in the cellars of the Opera Populaire when the Punjab lasso was released and he fell hard onto the cold stone floor.

He'd ignored the pain as he stumbled to his feet, uncertain whether that…that man meant to truly free him, he ignored it as he fled with Christine across that underground lake. He did not mention it to her as the train rumbled north out of Paris, nor as the ship docked at the Swedish port, nor on their wedding day.

He had never spoken of his pain and she had never spoken of that night.

The night she sold her soul to a devil to save his life.

And, now, a year had passed and she was almost gone. His sweetheart of his youthful days along the Brittany coast, his radiant angel with her pure voice, his lover, his bride.

His Christine, his savior.

He never knew what became of the Opera Ghost. Once they had settled in Sweden, safe and wedded in her native country, he had written to Paris, made discrete inquiries. But no one knew. The disfigured composer had vanished. Meg Giry, the little blonde dancer, had scrurried ahead of the mob and found him gone, found only a rich black cloak and a white mask.

There had been an investigation. The catacombs beneath the Opera House had been most ruthlessly searched. But there was no sign of its Phantom.

Glancing over his shoulder, he could see a fine line of pink tracing the contours of the horizon beyond the orchards. And he remembered one of Papa Daae's sad songs…they were always sad songs.

_"I'm tired, I've been torn, the cruel light of dawn comes to claim back my soul. Take me away. Carry me back to your home."_

As a boy, untested by life and unscarred, he had never really understood the sorrow of those songs. But, after all this time, he could still hear the perfect sound of that violin in a dimly lit room with the ocean just beyond the door.

He remembered the sound of another violin, low and exquisite in a gloomy, ivy-covered graveyard.

_I should get up. I should go to her now while I can._

He was afraid to. He was afraid that, after the hours of drugged sleep and waking delirium, she might speak of things he could not stand to hear.

He remembered the sunlight winter afternoon when his own mother died in his arms. His father had been away, she had taken ill and passed away before the Comte de Chagny could hurry back to his wife's bedside. She'd convulsed in her son's gentle embrace and called out the name of a fiancée who had died in a hunting accent two years before she met Raoul's father.

Raoul knew his parents loved each other dearly, that they had always been true to their vows. Still, in those final moments of life, it was not his father's name she had called out.

He rose stiffly and unlocked an ornately carved chest. Wincing a little, he bent and lifted out a battered leather case and a pasteboard box. He laid them both on his desk, not caring about the porcelain cup that fell to the floor, shattering and spilling the now-cool tea across the moss-colored rug.

He opened the pasteboard box first. Inside was a wedding veil. It was crumbled and water-stained. He wasn't sure why they'd kept it. It was, after all, the only relic of that night of horror. He crumpled it in his hands for second, then tossed it into the low fire the housekeeper had lit for him.

Then he opened the worn leather case. A little brass plate, now dark and tarnished bore the name, DAAE. It was one of the few things they had carried with them from Paris to Gothenburg. Her father's violin lay inside.

"This," he said softly, "shall go back to its rightful owner. I will bury it with Christine."

Closing the case on the old violin, he carefully pushed open the door to the bedroom.

He saw Doctor Bergstrom first, seat beside the bed.

"Thank God for this man," Raoul thought, "I bless him."

It had not been easy to find a doctor fluent in French when Christine first began to experience difficulty with their unborn child. She remembered little of her native tongue and, in the months since their flight to Sweden, Raoul had learned little of the language.

It hadn't mattered, they had lived quietly. Just two in their little home and they were happy.

The physician met his glance, nodded, and rose.

Raoul sat down by his wife's bed and waited in silence.

With the help of the doctor, her maid had carefully dressed her in a clean nightgown and braided her always unruly curls. The pale rose coverlet was pulled up to her thin shoulders.

She was so pale, so still, so fragile. If it had not been for breath that feebly stirred a stray lock of her hair, he would have believed her to be dead.

He reached down and gently pushed the curl from her cheek.

She opened her eyes and he could see they were hazed and blank. He wondered if she saw him there, leaning over her in grief.

He knew she did because he saw her try to smile.

Then he saw her entire body tense against the fresh linen sheets.

He gathered her quickly in his arms, cradling her and half afraid the name she might call out in those last moments would not be his. He almost expected to hear her cry out for her Angel, her nameless Angel.

But she did not. A soft moan of pain became a whimper and her soul slipped wordlessly from the limp, twisting body in his arms.

He was the one who cried out. He cried out just once, folding her so lifeless and so close to his heart, he called her name once in anguish.

"Christine!"

Then he laid her down carefully on the pillows and calmly pushed her tangled curls back from her face. He tied the blue silk ribbon of her wrinkled nightdress at her throat, then closed her trusting eyes forever.

_Perros-Guirec, France_

Raoul stood for a moment longer before the vault, one hand clutching a black hat, the other grasping the iron gate that stood between him and the remains of the Daae's, father and daughter.

Fresh white roses, a reluctant offering from his kin lay heaped against the stone and ivy.

Within the vault, Christine had been laid to rest on a day of gentle showers. Her father's violin case lay in the crook of her arm. His mother's pearl rosary had been twined around her fingers before the polished wooden lid was closed over her.

His carriage, the last one left, waited just outside the churchyard as the afternoon faded into a misty evening, and he slowly turned from the Daae vault.

_It is time to go home._

But as he walked away, he heard the sound of a solitary violin rising like an angel's voice from within the tomb.

He did not turn. He did not want to know.

* * *

_The song lyrics quoted are from "Sail Me Away," a song in the recently-closed Broadway musical, "Lestat," which starred a former Broadway Phantom, Hugh Panaro. This short story is based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical. _  



End file.
